Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister accepts the President’s Award from the Tampa Bay LGBT Chamber in June. (Photo by Dylan Todd)
Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister is Donald Trump’s pick to head the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), responsible for enforcing America’s drug laws, the president-elect announced over the weekend.
While the nomination is being applauded in Tampa by those who have worked with Chronister directly in fighting substance abuse, it is being lambasted in some corners of MAGA World, specifically for his arrest of a pastor for violating a COVID lockdown in 2020.
Chronister, who has led the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office since 2017, made national news in March 2020 when he arrested Rodney Howard-Browne, pastor of The River at Tampa Bay Church, after the agency said he “intentionally and repeatedly hosted church services with hundreds of members in attendance, despite knowing he was in violation of orders set in place by the President, the Governor of Florida, the CDC and the Hillsborough County Emergency Policy Group.”
But following criticism from some local Republicans for arresting the pastor, Chronister, who was running for re-election that year, reached out and shared a meal with the same man he had arrested two months earlier, raising ethical questions about visiting a defendant with a criminal case pending. (Then-State Attorney Andrew Warren, meanwhile, dropped the case.)
“It’s impossible to defend this,” said conservative YouTube personality Mike Cernovich, who has more than 1 million followers on X. “He even bragged about it. The DEA has already shown itself to often act as a thug organization, focusing on low level users instead of the cartels. Arresting a pastor?! This man can’t be near more power.”
“I’m going to call ’em like I see ’em. Trump’s nominee for head of DEA should be disqualified for ordering the arrest a pastor who defied COVID lockdowns,” said Kentucky Republican U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie on Sunday.
“THIS MAN’S NOMINATION MUST BE BLOCKED HE WAS A TYRANT DURING COVID,” wrote Lake County Commissioner Anthony Sabatini, who filed a lawsuit against Hillsborough County for its COVID lockdown. “I HAD TO SUE HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY TO STOP THE INSANITY HE CREATED WE NEED A DEA DIRECTOR WHO BELIEVES IN FREEDOM.”
‘Unfair’ criticism
Hillsborough County Republicans insist such criticism is unfair.
“I think what he was doing, what he felt was enforcing the laws at the time, is why he did what he did,” Hillsborough County Republican Committeewoman April Schiff told the Phoenix. “He’s always been that way in doing what he thinks is the right thing to do under the law.”
Jake Hoffman is president of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans.
“Much of the criticism you’re witnessing online is in regard to actions taken by the Sheriff four years ago that the rest of the country is just learning about,” he told the Phoenix in an email.
“During that time, I was openly critical about all the COVID policies as well, and the Sheriff sat down with me for an hour long recorded interview addressing much of the Republican communities concerns. [Sic] I believe the Sheriff learned from those experiences and will do a great job leading the DEA under President Trump.”
Chronister is married to Nikki DeBartolo, daughter of former San Francisco 49ers owners Eddie DeBartolo, who was convicted in a gambling fraud scandal in the late 1990s and fined $1 million, but he never served prison time. Donald Trump pardoned him in February 2020.
Ties with Democrats
When Chronister ran for re-election in 2020, his previous financial contributions to Democrats were a sore spot for some Republicans. Although he gave more donations to Republicans, campaign finance records showed that Chronister sent checks to Barack Obama, Charlie Crist, the Democratic National Committee, and to Hillsborough County Democratic state legislators such as Fentrice Driskell, Dianne Hart, and Susan Valdes.
“I support the most qualified candidate. And if that happens to be a Democrat who I’ll be working with, then that’s who I’m going to support. But it doesn’t make me any less of a Republican,” Chronister told this reporter that year.
“I think that people need to understand that he was serving countywide in a county that was then dominated by Democrats, and he knows what it takes to get elected, and he did that and he basically worked to satisfy his entire constituency, both Democrats and Republicans,” said Schiff.
Since 2020, all of Chronister’s political contributions have been exclusively for Republicans or GOP campaign committees, according to Open Secrets. That included several donations to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Chronister was at DeSantis’ side on Aug. 4, 2022, when the governor announced that he was suspending Andrew Warren as Hillsborough County state attorney for alleged “neglect of duty” and “incompetence,” claiming he went too easy on criminals with some of his policies and that he had signed public statements objecting to prosecutions for abortion and transgender care.
Chronister and Warren had worked together on several criminal justice reform measures and were friendly for years leading up to that day.
“I can tell you that I was proud to have the sheriff’s support in 2020,” Warren said on WMNF-Radio in August. “I was proud of the fact that we worked together to reduce crime. That all of these policies from drug diversion programs to mental health courts, to the civil citation programs, that was supported by the sheriff and by the law enforcement community here.”
When asked Monday about his thoughts about Chronister’s nomination, Warren sent this text message to the Phoenix:
“I hope all the president-elect’s nominees succeed in making our country better: helping people achieve the American dream that make us more prosperous, safe, and healthy, while leaving behind the divisive and dirty politics that hold us back and tear at the fabric of our nation.”
Opioids
Among top issues that Chronister will face if he’s confirmed is the opioid crisis, which remains among the biggest drug problems in the country, even with overdose deaths starting to decline.
“I think he’ll be excellent in that position,” said Ellen Snelling of the Hillsborough County Anti-Drug Alliance.
“I have worked with him over many years, and he’s been very supportive of prevention, treatment, and recovery. Anything to do with substance abuse, he’s always been on our side, trying to help, so it’s been a very positive experience working with him,” she said, referring specifically to the Sheriff’s Office’s work with takebacks of unused or expired prescription drugs.
“He’s been very active with that,” Snelling said. “He’s come to our takebacks. He’ll do PSAs before our events to get more people to come out. They have prescription drug take-back boxes at every sheriff’s office, every district office, there’s a 24-7 box there. So, on a lot of the projects we work on, he and his deputies have been working with us.”
In February 2020, Chronister announced his office’s support of a proposal to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of cannabis throughout Hillsborough County. Snelling said she opposes the “complete decriminalization” of pot, a sentiment she expressed to Chronister at the time. But she added that she understood why Hillsborough County agreed to do so, since it was aligning with the city of Tampa’s decision to do the same in 2016.
Christopher Cano, executive director of Suncoast NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) has been critical of the DEA on cannabis policy and says the incoming Trump administration’s nominees “do not seem promising champions of reform either.” He noted that many high-profile appointments in the areas of public health and drug safety “are Prohibitionists, as is top picks to lead the Justice Department.”
“Only [Robert] Kennedy and Chronister have seemed to espouse common sense views on cannabis decriminalization,” Cano said.
Another issue that may come up during his confirmation hearings is Chronister’s stance on gun safety. In 2019, he called for enhanced mental health screenings for anyone who wants to own a gun, supporting universal background checks and the “red flag” provision in Florida’s 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Act, which allows law enforcement to go to court to take guns away from individuals declared a danger to themselves or others for up to a year.
Sabatini believes those positions will hurt Chronister with some GOP senators. “I think there’s a good chance that the few strong conservative Republican senators that we have may vote him down when his full record is exposed,” he said.
This story is courtesy of Florida Phoenix.
Florida Phoenix is a nonprofit news site, free of advertising and free to readers, covering state government and politics with a staff of five journalists located at the Florida Press Center in downtown Tallahassee. Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
